05/05/2010

Have been at Crea. It is a conference I kept hearing about and bumping into in the last half of year alongside my inquiries about creativity, innovation, divergent thinking etc... It paid off, both at a personal and at a professional level. Qual research conferences I had been at before are usually "not your typical corporate conferences", yet, being in a conference that is about much more than just business was very rewarding. So, what did I do at Crea?

I put some order in my disorderly knowledge about creativity and creative processes. I got the chance to practice what I used to only preach (in terms of creative behaviors). I spent more time barefoot than with my shoes on. I met a bunch of really inspirational, free spirited, generous people. I got in touch with myself by moving, drawing, dancing, walking the labyrinth, "buttoning and unbuttoning with people ;)", laughing... I played. I had fun. I cried when it was over.

02/12/2010

Most probably for the Romanians reading this, who obviously are here also because they are everywhere else online, the image above is already very well known. It has not been so until two weeks ago...

It is about a campaign to help raise money for Daniel Raduta, who has been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in October 2009 and needs to have a hematopoietic stem cells transplant, as soon as possible. The procedure costs around 120000-150000 EUR.

Unfortunately, not the first such story, and not the last... Yet, I have never seen a similar campaign spreading around with such force and energy - as far as I know, orchestrated completely online, in the blogosphere, without the help of the traditional media. In less than two weeks, almost 70.000EUR have been raised. And it is obvious that Daniel has every reason in the world to be happy.

But it is not exactly the humanitarian dimension of the story I want to tackle in this post - I think that the words of Daniel and of his pregnant wifethat you can find heredo much more than any other attempt to find the words that would move people (plus, i hope that thanks to Lorena and Monica we will be able to get back on this with something more concrete).

I want to talk about what this amazing phenomenon has been teaching me as a researcher, as an observer of people, and trends and social mechanics.

First of all, it taught me a lesson about Generation G - generation Generosity. The concept named as such I found in Trendwatching's February 2009 briefing (an excellent and extremely inspirational source, BTW), but the word about a cultural value shift towards kindness, social responsibility, sharing and engaging has been floating around for some time. I heard it also in John Gerzema's presentation at the 2009 Esomar Qualitative Conference., and from there I got stuck with the example of TOMS Shoes who donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair sold online!

Yet, I felt very skeptical about this trend in Romania. I mean, we are not talking here about a culture of 50 years of heavy consumerism that could backfire into consumer disgust and non-consumption. We are only 20 years away from the empty fridges and grocery counters which still push our buttons and make us act like badgers before winter time: accumulate, accumulate, accumulate! And we are too dangerously close to our profound rural societal roots...

But 70000EUR in two weeks must mean something, must mean that (my) generation might be a bit of generation G, that the culture of online, a culture of exposing and sharing, can actually alter our historical and antropological genes, and it will not take another 2000 years.

Another observation about the succes of this campaign is that it allowed people to put not (only) their money out there, but their skills.

In a (online) world where showing your skills and sharing your passions are
the new status symbols, where skills can make you famous or rich (writing articles or posting tutorials), it is only fair that the same skills or passions should be able to save someone's life too. And I figure it is extremely rewarding.

It will be for me too, if anyone reads this post about trends and generation G, but in the process ends up hooked on Daniel's story and motivated to do a gesture... In a way, I have offered my skills here. And I promise it will not be the only gesture.

02/04/2010

One heuristic principle states that laughter might
be a physiological reaction to novel connections made by assembling
neurons in the brain in unexpected ways. I always advise people, in any kind of research or ideation related environments to give special attention to ideas that make them laugh, as there may be more there than "silly".

I saw last night Avatar at IMAX. First 5 minutes: everybody around me (and me included) was seriously (and incontrolablly) giggling as they were accomodating to the new type of viewing experience. Q.E.D.

PS: as i told this story to two people this morning, they laughed. This is how it got turned into a post :)

01/13/2010

Yes, the business suffered. Yes, there were months when we wondered if we were going to even hit the break even. But the big picture was not so bad and we still had a more "expensive" Christmas party than ever before ;)... oh, and a more fun team building session: wall climbing!

Less business also meant that, for the first time in many years, I managed to spend a decent amount of time for my personal life, and esspecially with my son. It felt very good and natural (maybe too natural now, when 2010 comes with different perspectives :).

2009 was really interesting relationship-wise... Clients-related, in a very counter-intuitive way, some of those who cut down their business felt even more as our friends, and those who practically saved us financially in 2009 provided some of the biggest disspointments of the year. On a personal level!

It sounds so cliche, I know, but we really did do more interesting work in 2009. And it has nothing to do with the financial crisis, i honestly think it is was just the coincidence of getting really interesting projects. But it is true that we stopped to gather our breath and think more often. And this felt good also!

So 2009 was a year of contrasts that felt good in many ways... or at least feels good if we look through the lenses that this optimistic beginning of 2010 puts on our eyes :)

12/16/2009

It is such a fortunate coincidence that we get to write our first post before Christmas, and we have a nice moment to share: getting together for a "sweets making" session... which turned out just like our entire year, which took us through a lot, but ended up on a very optimistic note... and delicious, for our cooking session.

So, Merry Holidays to everybody and... have a praline and think of us :)!